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A friend of mine is occasionally wandering about at loose ends on a weekday, and will often call me and ask if I want to try takeout from somewhere neither of us has eaten before. Well….YES. So earlier this week we tried takeout from the Taco Garage on Broadway, as we had both seen it and wanted to try it. The menu looks like basic Tex-Mex offerings, even though they are arranged into somewhat thematically themed categories such as “Wrenchiladas” and “Licensed Plates.”

I have to start by acknowledging the excellent dark hot sauce that came with the de rigueur chips. The sauce was excellent and packed some nice heat. Also, the chips were fresh and crispy.

Taco Garage chips and salsa (photo taken while waiting for the to-go order)

The chicken flautas offered as an appetizer were really, really good. Fried to a nice golden crispness, the chicken had a great flavor. The flautas came with a lime cilantro dipping sauce that was really good — tangy and citrussy and just creamy enough to fully complement the flautas.

Chicken flautas and lime cilantro dipping sauce from the Taco Garage

The two lunch plates received mixed reviews. The enchiladas divorciadas plate featured one really good chicken enchilada — a soft, thin corn tortilla filled will nicely cooked and well-seasoned chicken — and one really neutral beef enchilada filled with less-than-thrilling picadillo or carne or whatever it was. The beef smelled like processed meat and the flavor wasn’t good. The tomatillo sauce on the chicken enchilada was good; and the chile con carne sauce sparingly placed on the beef enchilada might have been good had there been enough to really taste. The refried beans and the rice were both “meh” — almost like afterthoughts to the entree.

The “wrenchilada” divorciadas plate from Taco Garage.

The Combination Plate #3 came with one cheese enchilada, which was really good; one chicken chalupa which would have been good had it traveled better; and one crispy beef taco which neither traveled well nor tasted good.

A view of the taco from Combination Plate #3

Again, the beef had a processed smell to it. The picadillo was very salty, as were the pieces of potato added to soak up the salt during cooking.

Combination Plate #3 from Taco Garage

The best part of this plate were the borracho beans, which were really excellent. Peppers, onion and bacon accented the flavor of the beans, which were not cooked to a mush. These were put in a separate cup so the juice didn’t spill all over in the takeout box.

The borracho beans from Taco Garage

The plates came with two tortillas each; we asked for and received one corn and one flour tortilla. The flour one was okay, but the corn one was really good.

Overall, the results of this takeout experiment were mixed. The chips and salsa, the chicken flautas and the lime cilantro dipping sauce, the chicken enchilada and the borracho beans are definite “yes” and the beef items and the bland rice and refried beans “no.” You can find more info on the Taco Garage on their webpage:http://www.tacogarage.com/.